


all my pipe dreams made me insane

by arbitrarily



Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 20:17:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing like ringing in the New Year with an old habit. (AU in which Jess is Nick's Caroline and not their new roommate).</p>
            </blockquote>





	all my pipe dreams made me insane

**Author's Note:**

> Written May 2012 for a ficathon, wherein the prompt was: "ever since the last episode [aka Season One finale] I've wanted a weird swap where Jess is Nick's Caroline instead and they met in college and break up over the years and hate bang on New Years." This is that fic.

 

 

 

Schmidt will later admit he dropped the ball here.   
  
He had contingency plans. His contingency plans had contingency plans. There’s a flowchart taped to the back of his closet door.  
  
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK TAPE AND OPEN.  
  
But he also  _maybe_  had the opportunity to  _maybe_  get laid.   
  
Or just breathe the same oxygen as that of the sweet sultry double-syllabled minx Cece.  
  
In other words: Jess came back to town, and Nick returned to the dark side like an ousted Jedi Knight.   
  
All on Schmidt's watch.  
  
All on his watch.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
ON DECEMBER 30TH --  
  
“Winston,” Schmidt hisses. “Winston? Do you copy?”  
  
Winston elbows Schmidt in the ribs. “Yeah, dude, I copy. With you hovering right there, trying to keep a man from his bagel and schmear, you bet I copy.” Schmidt runs a hand over his side and grumbles under his breath about the Italian cotton blend of his shirt and the slimming effect of pinstripes while Winton hesitantly pokes a fork at the toaster.  
  
Schmidt snatches the fork from his hand.  
  
“What’s the matter with you? You crawl down into the subway and put your tongue on the third rail? Yeah, I bet you would do that, smart guy. Wise guy. Whiz kid. Metal,” he says emphatically and raises the fork like a weapon toward Winston, “is a conductor of electricity. That’s science, homes.”  
  
“And that’s my bagel burning, so get out my way or get that bagel on out of there before we got a whole other kind of science up in here.”  
  
Schmidt unplugs the toaster and then turns to Winston, his expression grave.  
  
“We got a Code Crash Bandicoot on our hands, my friend.”  
  
Winston drops his bagel back into the toaster as he gapes at Schmidt. He frowns then and looks to his wrist but there isn’t a watch there. He considers his wrist anyway.  
  
“That’s impossible, man. We would be seeing the signs already. These things do  _not_  happen overnight.”  
  
Schmidt’s face scrunches up, like an angry meerkat (or at least that’s what Nick said it looks like). “What are you talking about?”  
  
“What are  _you_  talking about?”  
  
“I’m talking about a Threat Level Three-Pronged Trident emergency: Code Crash Bandicoot.”  
  
Winston slams his hand down on the counter and then crosses his arms over his chest.  
  
“But we’d be seeing volcanic ash by now!”  
  
Schmidt mouths  _what?!?!?!_  incredulously and then says, “That is so not what Code Crash Bandicoot covers.”  
  
“Yeah, dude. Code Crash Bandicoot is invoked in the case of an apocalyptic volcanic eruption and we need to haul ass to higher ground and buy some raincoats to save us from the scorching lava that’s gonna rain down from the sky.”  
  
“You fool. That’s Code Dante’s Peak.”  
  
Winston considers this for a beat.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, you might be right about that.”  
  
Schmidt takes a step forward and lowers his voice, his face incredibly serious.  
  
“Code Crash Bandicoot means one Jessica Day is within a twenty mile radius and we need to contain this situation and institute lockdown. Immediately.”  
  
Winston groans; he slumps and drops his head to the counter.  
  
“Of all the weeks for Coach to go to Chicago!" he shouts, but his voice is muffled. "Of all the weeks! To Chicago!”  
  
 Schmidt pats Winston on the shoulder. “I know, man. Life is full of cruel trickery and haunting  _whim_ sy.”  
  
Winston peeks up at Schmidt. “Don’t say whimsy like that.”  
  
Schmidt pulls his hand away.  
  
“That’s my schmear by the way, you lummox.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jess is in town for the weekend. Jess came out to L.A. to see Cece.  
  
There is a string we can tie through all the events that are to come:  
  
Jess came to L.A.   
  
 Jess came for Cece.  
  
It’s New Year’s Eve.  
  
Cece wants to party.  
  
 Schmidt wants to party with Cece.  
  
Containment fails miserably.  
  
All five of them meet at the same club on the same night.  
  
Jess is drinking a glass of pink wine and Nick looks like he’s just seen a ghost. Like he's just seen Casper’s hot heartbreaker of a sister.  
  
“Threat Level Chartreuse!” Schmidt gasps and grabs Winston by the elbow. “Threat Level Chartreuse! Blinding emergency here!”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Nick met Jess their freshman year of college.   
  
When Nick met Jess, the first thing he did was insult her. He made fun of her major (at that time it was early childhood education, which Nick called Finger-Painting for Experts) and she called him sour and sad and too young to be this curmudgeonly.   
  
He’s not sure how or why they exactly became friends, but they did. He blames the mandatory science course all freshman were required to take. They both took Botany (which he totally loved, but admitting that seemed like the worst concession he could make, especially to a person like Jess who loved everything, and because she loved everyone and everything, it was his job to hate it all) and wound up being Plant Partners.   
  
They also wound up drunkenly making out at his dorm’s Christmas party (or, rather, All-Inclusive of All Religions Egg Nog Blow Your Chunks Blowout) and when he came back to school that second semester they made out some more, and then suddenly they were making out regularly even though she drove him crazy and she made him get out of bed before noon on the days he didn’t have class and made him go to things like farmer’s markets (but that was later; when they were 19, all they really did was fuck, and for the first time it felt like he wasn’t just clumsily trying to figure out female anatomy but was actually, like, starting to be moderately good at it) and she made him actually care about things, which was totally outside his wheelhouse, and then they graduated, and she started teaching, and he started law school, and then --  
  
She left him.   
  
For a guy named Spencer. She left him for a guy named Spencer.  
  
Spencer is the worst name ever.   
  
Fucking Spencer.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The thing is: she’s left Spencer.  
  
The other thing is: Nick and Jess can’t occupy the same space without a) Nick crying; b) Jess crying while singing “Time Of Your Life” and eulogizing Patrick Swayze; or c) Nick and Jess fucking.  
  
Depending on your vantage point, it’s either a blessing or a curse that option three wins out.  
  
Because the thing is: it’s a half hour after midnight, thirty minutes into the new year, and Nick and Jess are locked in a super minimalist bathroom stall at Los Angeles’s eighteenth hottest club.  
  
He has her balanced on the edge of the sink (he knows this is a high-class club because there’s a sink in the bathroom stall! each stall has its own sink! or wait this might just be the handicapped stall, so maybe not that high-class after all) and one of her shoes has fallen off.  
  
“Oh my god,” Nick mutters against her mouth, his hand skidding over her inner thigh as he tries to hold her open to him, “I hate you so much you make me want to become a monk you make me want to find Richard Gere and Buddha and shave my head and move to Tibet.”  
  
“Shut up,” Jess practically growls, somehow accidentally catching his bottom lip between her teeth as she says it. “You don’t get to say that,” she pants, rolling her hips down onto his, making his vision go kinda fuzzy there for a beat (but then that might be all those Red Bull and vodkas talking, or the weird pseudo-black light/strobe light thing happening in the ladies’ room), “I said that first that was my material.”  
  
His fingers dig in, right at the dip where her thigh connects to her hip, and he bucks up sharply. Jess’s head bounces against the wall a little, her mouth gaping open as she makes this weird choked mewling sound like she’s a drowning kitten and he bites at her chin, which really shouldn’t be a sexy thing at all, but it has her grabbing at his shoulders and clenching tight around his dick. “You can’t be a monk,” he says, and he cradles her jaw, his grip too tight and his fingers keep catching in her hair (she has too much fucking hair he dreams about that hair he wishes she’d cut it all off and pretend she’s Peter fucking Pan or something), and he pulls a little, makes her arch her neck back, “you’re not a dude only dudes are monks,” and he flicks his thumb over her clit, coincidental or for emphasis of the fact she’s definitely not a dude he’s not entirely sure, but she’s making that wounded cat noise again, so that’s a good thing.  
  
“I said,” she gasps. She loses the thread of conversation as she tips her head back against the wall and in the weird light of the bathroom she looks totally dangerous and that might be the weirdest word a person could ever try and associate with Jess. It’d be like calling Nick mature or calling Schmidt subtle or Winston cool as a cucumber and Coach low-key. But the way the light is hitting her face, the angle, the way she looks like she’s so strung out (or so drunk, she did have a lot of pink wine) she can’t even hold her head up; her eyes look terrifying and dark, her mouth full and parted just enough that he can see a hint of tongue, a flash of teeth. She moans quietly, and Nick presses his body that much closer to her and her nails bite into the back of his neck.   
  
“I said,” she starts again, “a long time ago,” and he’s fucking her harder now, whatever tenuous grip he has on his own self-control has always been micro-thin and she’s really trying its limit here, “I said you made me want to go all Fräulein Maria and join a convent and sing songs and swear off men forever until I have to nanny for a bunch of Austrian kids and fall in love with their anti-Nazi father because,” her voice finally breaks there, and god, he has  _missed_  her. Who else would recount the plot of  _The Sound of Music_  while she’s getting fucked on New Year’s Eve in the ladies’ room at a club where the cover to get in was painfully close to the exact amount of cash Nick had in his checking account.  
  
“Because Nazis are bad,” she manages to stammer out against his ear, and that should not be super hot (or it can be? because Nazis really are bad) but her mouth is wet and her voice is the way it gets when she’s all twirly (her word) and good-and-fucked (his word), and right after she says it, he can feel her, the way her whole body seizes up and her fingers go all death grip against that jut of muscle he has between his neck and his shoulder that’s always tense, and it’s sort of like she’s giving him the world’s meanest massage as she comes.  
  
He sighs (out of relief, and well, pleasure too, come on, he’s getting laid), and starts moving against and into her in earnest.   
  
Jess is running her fingers through his hair almost tenderly when she whispers along his jaw, “You are the worst thing to ever happen to me.”  
  
She bites him before she kisses him, but by then he’s coming and he’s just trying to breathe and she won’t take her mouth off of his.  
  
He’s okay with that.  
  
She can keep her mouth on his.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Code Crash Bandicoot has been elevated to Code Purple Rain.”  
  
Winston’s head lolls to the side as he wrenches his gaze from the dance floor ( . . . and the ladies on it) and looks sidelong at Schmidt.  
  
“Schmidt. Just tell me what a Code Purple Rain is. Because unless it concerns The Artist Formerly Known As Prince moving in with us I have not a shred of a hint of an idea as to what you are talking about.”  
  
Schmidt leans forward and looks at Winston like Winston is the actual worst friend ever.  
  
“No. No, it does not include The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. Where is your head at. I swear. It’s like you never attended the briefing sessions.” Schmidt sighs dramatically and drops back onto the velvet couch they’re sitting on in the corner of the club.  
  
“Nick Miller has reentered Jess Day airspace. He’s breached her territory. He’s gone down behind enemy lines.”  
  
Winston makes a sour face.  
  
“So much terribly military innuendo, man.”  
  
“The Cold War has heated, my friend. It has gone nuclear.”   
  
Winston rolls his eyes.  
  
“You say anything about an impregnable fortress and I’m out of here.”  
  
Schmidt shakes his head and tries to take a sip from an empty glass. “We lost a good man out there. But good men die everyday. He died for his country. He died for a cun -- ”  
  
Winston holds up his hand.  
  
“Don’t finish that thought, man.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jess came to L.A. for the weekend.  
  
She moves into the loft a month later.  
  
“Code Walter Cronkite, my god,” Schmidt moans.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _f i n ._


End file.
